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My left shoulder is still weak, so i'm not sure what events I will swim. Each day is so different. I'll keep an open mind on Sat what events to swim. Free is fine, the weakest two are back and breast. I think i'll use the Sure Thing strategy - if I have to have a good swim to make a top ten time, consider not swimming it. Not worth using a silver bullet and miss a top ten.

Sat:
100 IM - prob not
50 back - maybe
50 breast - prob not to maybe
100 fly - most likely
relays? depends
Thus, I may not even go on Sat
Gut check: Do I care? Not really. I could be doing P90X instead!

This morning I swam with Hannah at the McBurney Y. This facility was built just 10 years ago, and is very light and airy, especially when compared to the city’s older YMCAs. The 7-lane pool features cheery tile work and a wonderful mural with muscular yet fluid swimmers cavorting in a pool very similar to the one it overlooks. Although McBurney is just 2½ miles (3 subway stops on the express train) from my regular Y, I had managed to never visit here before. So today I managed not only to get in a good workout with a good friend in a pretty and inspiring place, but also add another pool to add to my NYC-pools-I’ve-visited list, below.

I got there as the small masters group was finishing their workout, so I got to say hi to my friend Miriam. The pool was semi-crowded, and I got my equipment and hopped into the designated fast lane with three others. I was a little early, so did an extended warmup before starting in on one of the HVT workouts with Hannah. The extra warmup was good, as I started out feeling a little sore and tight from yesterday’s weights but ended up ready to swim hard. Here’s what I did:

That was it. I’m glad I swam at McBurney finally, but its many charms didn’t tempt me to abandon my regular Y for it. The pools are similarly crowded (although McBurney, with its 7 lanes, is probably more predictable than my Y, which just has 4). Lanes are wider at McBurney, and the pool has better light. But since there’s no second pool at McBurney, the water is on the warm side to accommodate mixed usage, and the number of lap swimming lanes is frequently reduced for make room for swim lessons and water aerobics. (Although I have to say, the swim class for very young tots going on as we were wrapping up our workout was very sweet--it involved lots of rubber duckies and singing. Still, I was glad to have a buffer lane between the kiddies and me. I did keep hoping a rubber duck would swim over our way though.)

Mostly, today left me feeling lucky the city has so many pools to swim in! Here are the ones I’ve visited so far (asterisked = outdoor pool):

Afternoons around here are often complicated between carpools for sports (diving, gymnastics, and crew), tutoring, and random pick up and drop off. Thursday has recently emerged as a island of relative calm in my normally chaotic schedule as there is no tutoring and I don't pick up or drop off, so for the second week in a row I snuck in a short workout.

I made up a quick variation on yesterday's Race Pace 500s set. Not very imaginative but good enough to get me in and out in less than an hour. Even though it was a short workout, I was tired by the time I got to the timed 200, though I guess that is shows.

Today I really only had 55 minutes to swim, so did a Speedo-ish workout. Apparently, that was plenty as I was tired at the end. Gym + mini recovery swim tomorrow, I hope.

Had a follow up with my doc today. I felt the trigger point injections (advil, touch of cortisone) were largely ineffective in treating my shoulder/scapular issue. I had 4 choices: (1) ignore pain, (2) more cortisone, (3) prolotherapy, or (4) PRP and gamble that it won't kill my pre-nats training. I opted for #4. #1 seemed very unappealing since it's been bothering me since last December despite ART and rehab exercises. #2 not of much interest, not likely to work anyway. So I had to make some calls to get in for a shoulder and neck MRI today to have PRP this Friday. The neck MRI is to rule out a possible disc herniation in the neck, which theoretically could be causing the scapular and neck pain. Ew, really hope not. I haven't had PRP since early to mid 2008. I seem to recall I could swim a couple days after. No problem if I have to emphasize sprint kicking for a few workouts. Just hope nothing too troublesome shows up! I don't think it should unduly hinder prep for Greensboro.

I haven't slept well since last Thursday. Really tired, and feel like I'm not recovering as well. Sleep is so important for training.

I may have a record number of swims for me in a month in March. This giving up cross training thing is weird.

I had a fun time at the TNYA workout at John Jay College this morning. It was a little less crowded than usual because about 60 of my teammates are attending the team’s swim and dive camp in Ft. Lauderdale this week. Still, I had plenty of good lanemates to keep me company. Sean coached, and this is what we did:

Main set mountain100 pull @ 1:35200 swim @ 3:10300 pull @ 4:45400 swim @ 6:20500 pull @ 7:551:00 rest500 swim @ 7:30400 pull @ 6:00300 swim @ 4:30200 pull @ 3:00100 swim @ 1:30[Instructions were to stay long on the way up and build (both within swims and within ladder) on the way down. I alternated FR and BK on the 200 and 400 swims on the way up, then on the way down mixed them up as needed to keep good space around me. A couple of guys who tend to go out very fast and then (euphemism ahead) end up a little less so were leading the lane—I didn’t want to go ahead of them because I dislike having people on my feet during the first part of my swims—so I just switched to backstroke when I caught up, which worked out well. It was actually pretty fun having rabbits to chase down, and the challenge of seeing how soon after the halfway point I could switch to backstroke kept me amused on the longer pieces.]